The semiconductor integrated circuit (IC) industry has experienced exponential growth. Technological advances in IC materials and design have produced generations of ICs where each generation has smaller and more complex circuits than the previous generation. In the course of IC evolution, functional density (i.e., the number of interconnected devices per chip area) has generally increased while geometry size (i.e., the smallest component (or line) that can be created using a fabrication process) has decreased. This scaling down process generally provides benefits by increasing production efficiency and lowering associated costs. Such scaling down has also increased the complexity of processing and manufacturing ICs. For example, a tri-layer photoresist material is used for lithography patterning. However, due to various requirements, such as optical refractivity index and absorption, the tri-layer photoresist may be tuned to meet those requirements but does not have enough etch selectivity for patterning. What are needed are a photoresist and a method using the photoresist to have improvements in this area.